d and little.

"Well, then, we shall go on to the Molokans'!" Kuzmitchov said
aloud. "The Jew told us that Varlamov was putting up for the night
at the Molokans'. So good-bye, lads! Good luck to you!"

"Good-bye, Ivan Ivanitch," several voices replied.

"I say, lads," Kuzmitchov cried briskly, "you take my little lad
along with you! Why should he go jolting off with us for nothing?
You put him on the bales, Panteley, and let him come on slowly, and
we shall overtake you. Get down, Yegor! Go on; it's all right. . . ."

Yegorushka got down from the box-seat. Several hands caught him,
lifted him high into the air, and he found himself on something
big, soft, and rather wet with dew. It seemed to him now as though
the sky were quite close and the earth far away.

"Hey, take his little coat!" Deniska shouted from somewhere far
below.

His coat and bundle flung up from far below fell close to Yegorushka.
Anxious not to think of anything, he quickly put his bundle under
his head and covered himself with his coat, and stretching his legs
out and shrinking a little from the dew, he laughed with content.

"Sleep, sleep, sleep, . . ." he thought.

"Don't be unkind to him, you devils!" he heard Deniska's voice
below.

"Good-bye, lads; good luck to you," shouted Kuzmitchov. "I rely
upon you!"

"Don't you be uneasy, Ivan Ivanitch!"

Deniska shouted to the horses, the chaise creaked and started, not
along the road, but somewhere off to the side. For two minutes there
was silence, as though the waggons were asleep and there was no
sound except the clanking of the pails tied on at the back of the
chaise as it slowly died away in the distance. Then someone at the
head of the waggons shouted:

"Kiruha! Sta-art!"

The foremost of the waggons creaked, then the second, then the
third. . . . Yegorushka felt the waggon he was on sway and creak
also. The waggons were moving. Yegorushka took a tighter hold of
the cord with which the bales were tied on, laughed again with
content, shifted the cake in his pocket, and fell asleep just as
he did in his bed at home. . . .

When he woke up the sun had risen, it was screened by an ancient
barrow, and, trying to shed its light upon the earth, it scattered
its beams in all directions and flooded the horizon with gold. It
seemed to Yegorushka that it was not in its proper place, as the
day before it had risen behind his back, and now it was much more
to his left. . . . And the whole la